Hard Drives

[Admiral Michael]

Hey,

For those of you who have tried WIndows Home Server you know that you can setup a sort of RAID setup with the hard drives to create on big storage location.

Is there any way to do this in Windows 2003 Server? I'd rather not use RAID as I have a few mixed sizes (2x 500GB, 2x 160GB).

Mike

 

[Admiral Michael]

*Bump*

Anyone?

I've read something about dynamic disks, is this what I want? Also is it advisable to do this? What happens if a drive fails? Do I loose all data or just what's on that drive?

 

[Johnny]

When you talk about different sized drives you are talking about JBOB Raid(Just a Bunch Of Disks). If yuo have a controller, or motherboard that will support it; then yes 2003 will allow you to do it.

More info: http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod.html

 

[X-Istence]

If you use span and one disk dies, you WILL lose all of your data.

Since you have two of each:

mirror 500 GB
mirror 160 GB

then span those

So you get 660 GB. That way you can lose one 160 GB drive, and one 500 GB drive and still have your data be safe.

 

[bmclaughlin807]

If you're looking to maximize storage space, maintain it as a single drive, and not lose excessive data if a drive fails, you may want to just mount the extra drives as folders on the main drive...

This would allow you to use all the disk space, and only lose whatever data is actually on the failed drive.

 

[Admiral Michael]

Well they are currently mounted as different drive letters but I would like it to have my two 500GB drives show up at 1 single large drive.

I've never had a HDD fail yet, well I did have one but it was a Samsung and was a replacement for a dead RMA'd drive.

Sadly my new server only has 2 SATA ports so I can only put 2 large drives. I was hoping the JBOD would just fill one drive then when it's full fill the other but if one drive fails then I just loose the data on the failed drive.

 

[Johnny]

if you want them to show up as drive, then raid0 is probably your best best. Mind you though; if a drve fails you lose all data.

 

[Dark Atheist]

i'll tag this on here instead of making another thread as it along these lines.

in my server i have 2x 500gb and 1 x 200gb under linux/bsd i can use all 3 drives to show as one, but if one drive dies i loose the lot, mind you i am ok with this as i have most backed up.

Under windows its a bit different, i dont really trust the windows spanning so im either limited to raid and can only use 2 out of the 3 in a raid setup or go down the jbod route and use all 3.

Does one offer better performance over the other? Thats the main thing seeing as i am not scared of losing anything, it just comes down to performance

 

[a00r]

whats the RPM

 

[Dark Atheist]

7200 - 2x500gb are sata 3.0Gbp the 120gb is 1.5 also 7200rpm, from the googling i have been doing some places are saying using jbod can impact performance